Vintage-Style German Glass Glitter Sign

I felt like playing with glitter this weekend and thought it would be so beautiful used on the detail of a vintage graphic. I found some old advertising images and modified them for use. I created a fun little glitter sign for my studio for the summer sun to hit as it comes through my big wonderful window.When modifying the images, I altered the colors of the graphic to closely match the colors of German glass glitter that I have. I added some typography of my own and I printed out the image onto card stock. Plain paper would ripple and warp from the moisture of the glue and card stock is great because you can tap it on the table much easier than plain paper when removing excess glitter.Work over a large piece of paper. I began by I drawing over the lettering with the glue, one letter at a time, then covering with glitter. I worked slow as I didn’t want the first letter drying before I got to the last. You’ll find a toothpick is your best friend when doing any intricate German glass glitter work. It picks up the unintended globs of glue,and the random chunks that didn’t come off when tapping off the residual glitter. A toothpick also helps drag glue into tiny areas that your glue bottle tip can’t get to.

No way was I going to attempt to draw all the detailed scrollwork of the design with my bead of glue as thick as it was, so simply dotting to punctuate areas of the scrolls was enough since the ink color was similar to the glitter color.It is important to only add one color of glitter at a time. I started with orange and covered every bit of orange detail then funneled all the orange glitter back into its bottle before moving on to another color. Otherwise, residual glitter will end up mixing together on your paper and you won’t want to funnel the mixed glitter back into the color specific bottles. (Though I did go back later and fill in some extra type with orange in the end.)Once all the colored German glass glitter was applied, color by color, I laminated the cardstock to a piece of foam core board using spray adhesive and trimmed out the design.Using a paintbrush, I applied glue to the edges of the foam core to add more glitter.Because my glitter sign is so lightweight, simple poster putty is all I will need to hang it up in my studio.Here are the beautiful vintage graphics modified for you to use with your own German glass glitter or in any other project. Click to enlarge.